Abstract
What did we do before Fossum? The fourth edition should be a bible for any veterinary student and any clinician who practises on living cats or dogs. Fifteen editors and contributors have combined their surgical, anesthetic and rehabilitation expertise to deliver an immensely user-friendly and clinically-relevant resource, now with an optional online component.
Small Animal Surgery offers concise, yet comprehensive, surgical management of common canine and feline disease conditions, while also providing indications for medical management of various orthopedic, soft tissue and neurological conditions, including a thorough chapter on inflammation and wound management.
The book’s 44 chapters are arranged into four very intuitive sections (general surgical principles, soft tissue surgery, orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery), making it very easy to flip through to find your chapter of interest.
The first section, general surgical principles, reviews perioperative procedures, including instrument sterilization, patient preparation, gowning, analgesic therapy, postoperative nutrition and essentials of physical rehabilitation.
The subsequent three sections (soft tissue surgery, orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery) each describe respective disease conditions, including medical versus surgical management, and a detailed ‘recipe’ of the surgical procedures with diagrams of relevant anatomy. Several feline-specific conditions, such as lower urinary tract disease and chronic progressive polyarthritis, are discussed.
Each chapter is consistent in its format and is dedicated to a specific surgical principle or body part. Surgeons like pictures, and this book is no exception; it is very well illustrated, with appropriately placed charts and text boxes with ‘Note’ and ‘Key point’ to draw your attention to important information.
The improvements in this fourth edition include several additional and updated surgical procedures, many new tables and charts, and the option of purchasing the textbook with an ‘expert consult’ website. The impressive ‘expert consult’ website provides educational videos and case-management scenarios, as well as allowing online access to the entire textbook. I demonstrated some of the online videos to a client, using my iPad — the only drawback I noted is that while the physical textbook has expanded in content, the font used in the index has markedly decreased in size.
In summary, the editors and authors have created an exceptionally user-friendly and practical surgical textbook and online resource, which will, undoubtedly, become a ‘go-to’ book for veterinary students, small animal practitioners, surgical residents and small animal surgeons alike.